So these came in about a week or so ago. Took a minute to post them because I was filming me opening it and stuff for Tanya's thesis. (it -could've arrived that day, but DHL was retarded) That and I was just being completely lazy.


I only ordered things from Taobao once before by myself, and that was through Mashimaro Girl, before they went under and off the map. I was a little bit skeptical with Taobaospree since the thing with MG, but I decided to try it out anyways since there was so much good feedback with it on EGL Livejournal.



Taobaospree is a bit of a network(?) when it comes to the way they're set up. As far as I understand, Susan is the top agent, when you email them she's the one who assigns a person to a specific agent. You pretty much go to that one agent for every order, they keep a file on you with whatever you order. (And you can always ask to switch agents if you wish). Not sure how many people in total are part of TaobaoSpree, but as far as I know there's Susan, Susan Zeng (you call her by Zeng not to get them mixed up), Lucy, and Doris, plus one agent who works specifically with all the shipping out of the items, so there's at least 5 people working under this business. To me that's pretty big, and it's good because it helps keep one person from getting overwhelmed by the volume of orders.

Taobaospree charges 10% service fee, and then on top of it they give you the advantage of their 40% discount with EMS. If you've shopped with other taobao sellers before, you might've noticed that sometimes shipping would be maybe 80-100+ for a simple 2-3 items, which was ridiculous and usually the reason why I never ordered before. But this outfit which was just that JSK + the boots came out to only$51 and change for EMS, which is really good.

Communication was good for the most part, maybe a bit more slower than I would have liked from my agent Zeng (at the same time, this was near Chinese New Year so the slowness was obviously expected for a while), the agents have MSN accounts to IM to if you wanted, which is nice.

Made my order sometime in the first two weeks of January, cool. Order went out, etc. They let me pay deposits since I'm a lolbrokestudent which was pretty nice. The shoes arrived to them the weekend before my birthday (so around the 22ndish), but my dress came MUCH LATER, like after CNY. Once I paid them the rest of the money, that's where I had a bit of an issue.

I had originally asked Zeng (and I e-mailed her it maybe 2-3 times over the course of the transaction, just to make sure I understood the way the shipping works and stuff) to send it EMS. Their default is DHL, because as she later explained, EMS was a bit of an issue with them sometimes, like something happened with one customer that had her package stuck in customs for a month and she blamed them for the delay. This kinda sorta happened with my friend Laura too, where she got her package sent but it took 2 weeks to arrive because it was held in customs during most of that time.

I understood that, but I still had a preference to have my things shipped EMS. I never had used DHL before, but after hearing stuff about DHL with Bodyline orders I was sort of iffish about them. Even if my package got stuck in customs, at least it'd be in the customs at JFK airport, and on top of it we're friends with our USPS deliverer, so he knows what to do if we aren't home, etc. If he missed us and happened to send the stuff back to the office, we can easily just call him by his cell and ask if he could possibly bring it back (badass, right?)

Anyways I sent the last deposit, but apparently there was a small error because Zeng forgot to calculate the weight of my JSK with my boots or whatever so I still owed a little bit of money, but she still sent it out. DHL. At first I hoped it was a mistake on her part, I asked her if she made a mistake, a week passed and she never replied to my e-mail, so I IMed her and she responded immediately, and when I asked thats when she told me she had already shipped it, DHL. and im like "oh boy... ok."

So I'm like alright, let me check the tracking number she gave me then. It said it was sitting in Washington, D.C.. I'm in New York, so immediately I'm like, "um, Zeng, I'm hoping you mixed my tracking with someone else's, because this is in a whole other state than my own". And she apologized and she went to the shipping agent to try and figure what happened.

So it was either a few hours, or maybe the next day, they're still trying to figure it out. So me being impatient, I called DHL myself, found out that they posted the postal code wrong, and the customer service lady fixed it and then it got sent to my house 2-3 days later. Then I waited for Zeng to contact me herself, maybe for a day or two, but she didn't. When I did IM her, she answered and told me what happened and whatnot. I told her that I knew already, I fixed the problem on my own.

I'm in the middle of a group order with An*tai*na right now, and I asked to have my agent switched to Lucy. Susan explained to me that Zeng was in the middle of putting down a loan for a house which is why her responses were really slow, but I personally feel that even though life is in the way of things like that, you should still take the initiative to get back to your client, especially when there was an issue with the shipping. I'm online on MSN all the time, you could've IMed me to just let me know quick, yknow? But no hard feelings on that.



Serious TL;DR version:
Taobaospree shopping service: Zeng (agent)

Communication: 6/10 it was fine but once my shipping issue came up, she wasn't as responsive as I had expected.
Pricing: 10/10. Compare this to most Japanese shopping services that charge 20%, Taobaospree only charges 10%
Shipping & Handling: 7/10. Asked for EMS but got sent DHL, and then had my little bit of an issue afterwards. But packaging was good, dress was packaged nicely, I had the shoes sent without the box to make the shipping cheaper, but they were packaged nicely, not smashed or anything like that. The pricing was affordable.

Overall, Zeng is nice and I understand her situation with the home loan and stuff, but now that I switched my agent I probably won't go to her again. Once she gets her stuff situated she's worth trying to work with though.


~~~~~~~~~~


Moving onto the items themselves....



Dream of Lolita Little Bear's Cafe JSK replica



Having seen and drooled over the original kinari version in Tokyo Rebel when it released, I was so intent on getting it. But with a sucky job back then, and birthday plans underway, me and Laura decided to get the replicas first, and then get originals for ourselves later. DoL didn't have the kinari version, so I settled for the brown.

One thing I disliked about DoL, is probably there was no notice on when the items were gonna be done. Initially I assumed that it was stock, already made and everything (that's how Lolita Princess was like, and they sent my dress right away). But the dresses are actually made to order, and I ended up waiting a whole month before Taobaospree received the dress. This may or may not be from Chinese New Year's, but being that Laura ordered hers back in December and never got hers until when Taobao got mine, that just tells me they were a bit overwhelmed by the volume of orders. I expect this during Christmas- New Years season, but I also expect there to be a notice on approximately how long it'll take to get made. The owner didn't really tell Zeng when stuff would be arriving.

Besides that, I was EXTREMELY satisfied with the quality of the piece. The original was made with I think corduroy, the DoL replica was not, but was made with a similar, thick fabric. The print is on point the trimmings on the dress were nice. (DoL has the tendency to post photos of stuff before they're completely finished, so the photo will show some really off, shitty lace but then when you get it you'll see they tried to make it as close as possible to the original). The shirring isn't tight like brand new brand clothing tend to be, it stretches pretty nicely, and the skirt is lined with a built-in petti liner. The waist ties (I usually just throw them in my drawer, I barely pay attention to them anymore) are one-sided. I ordered the large to be safe, but the L was actually big on me! Nothing a little tuck-and-stitch can't fix though. Me being like 5'7, the dress ends about just above knee-length on me. I personally wish that the shoulder straps were a bit longer, but at the same time that's just me wishing that the empire-waist design was like a normal-waisted JSK LOL












Overall? Now that I finally figured out my RIGHT SIZE, An*tai*na will definitely be my main go-to for lolita-style shoes. (Now if only they started producing Jesus Diamante replicas...



I forgot to take photos of the outfits I wore these with, so here is my plain pics when I first tried them on:










That's pretty much it for this review, I should have another An*tai*na one coming up soon~